The Cat and the Crystal Ball
by Tempered-Grief
Summary: Professor McGonagall starts to reflect on her life and realizes there are many people to forgive and learn to love again. However, someone predicts that there's not much time.


Why is it that I cannot finish anything I start?  Oh yeah, I'm lazy.  I forgot.  Here's something I thought might get my fingers moving again and spur me out of this lethargy of 18 years.  I didn't do much research, so I don't know if this idea has been used before.  Don't sue me.  I didn't steal anything. Anyone who claimed this concept as theirs can have credit, and J.K. Rowling can keep her precious Harry Potter and everything related to him.  

The Cat and the Crystal Ball

Minerva McGonagall watched the receding red heads of the Weasley twins as they whispered in conspiring tones while making their way out of the great hall.  It was their second to last year at Hogwarts, and so far no one had gotten and easy night's rest knowing that the two were trying to make it their best year as well.  She stirred her peas around on her plate and looked at the Gryffindor table.  Parvati Patil was chatting and giggling, one of her many gaudy hair jewels catching the light now and then.  A few yards away, at the Ravenclaw table, her sister Padma was bent over a book, alternately flipping the pages and raising her face to argue heatedly and, no doubt, intelligently, with her other house members.  

"She'd make a good lawyer!" Dumbledore had said once the girl's reputation for passionate arguments had reached the teachers.  He had always found twins amusing.  

"It never ceases to amaze me how they can seem to share the same thoughts, or be so strikingly dissimilar.  It's different with every pair, too."

She looked at the entry hall.  From where she was sitting, she could see just until the first bend in the stairway.  Everything past that was dark and unknown.  She shook her head of the silly thought.  Of course she knew what lay beyond that bend…more stairs.  It didn't take a psychic.

There were still ten minutes in which she could sit and think before preparing for the second years after lunch.  Then it would be the third years.  Miss Granger would enjoy today's lesson.  She and the rest of her friends had yet to see Minerva transform into an animagus state, and the response was usually that of awe and excitement.  At least there was that to look forward to.  

A clatter of glass on stone roused her from her thoughts, and she looked up to see a first year Hufflepuff hurriedly sweeping bits of his plate off the ground.  She didn't bother to reprimand, it was just an accident…

***"Minnie, you'd better be careful with the plates.  You might just drop one."  Minerva glares into a face the exact image of her own, down to the last eyelash.  "I won't either.  I'm always careful with the…oh!" A soapy plate slips from her fingers and hits the ground with a smash.  Both girls stare at each other with wide eyes, unnaturally quiet and listening.  "I think he's still asleep," Minerva whispers, and her twin visibly relaxes.  "I told you to be careful.  I knew you'd drop it," she muttered, but quietly, still listening.  Minerva bends to pick up pieces of the plate.  "You didn't either.  It was an accident.  You can't tell the future."  "Can too!" the other girl persists.  Just then, a bang is heard from the other side of the house.  "You stupid cows!  All I want is quiet! You horrid little beasts!"  The girls step off the stools they stood upon to wash dishes and automatically grasp hands for comfort.  A large man enters the kitchen and grabs a fist full of their jet-black hair with each hand.  "OUTSIDE! If you can't do what's required in the house, then you'll stay outside with the dogs!"  Minerva doesn't struggle, but her sister begs and cries.  She doesn't like the dark.  Later, as they hold each other beside the wood-frame house, Minerva whispers to her twin, "Stop shaking.  I'll beat anything to death that dares to come near us." She wishes she was as brave as she put on.  The shaking girl just says over and over, "I told you, I told you, I told you."  But it's not impossible to know they'd be punished.  It's just logic.***

Further along in the day, Minerva transformed herself into a tabby cat for her third years, receiving nothing but distracted acknowledgment.    

"Tell me, which one of you will be dying this year?"

Foreseeing the future was as absurd as it was elusive.  That night, as she furiously brushed her hair out of it's bun, she noticed more and more streaks of gray.  In the torchlight, the long waves of silver sprinkled black took on a more ethereal look than she would have liked.  It might have worked for isome/i she supposed, but only if they were approaching mystical and leaving behind all reason.  She was about to extinguish the light and climb into bed when an owl began pecking at her window.  What could it be at this time of night? She wondered…

The owl delivered a small, carefully folded note.  She held it up to the light to read, "Dearest Minerva, forgive the hour, but we must meet at once.  Please, it's very important.  See me in the great hall at midnight.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but the urgency overcomes the practical, I'm afraid.  Love, Your Sister."

Minerva sighed and put her spectacles back on.  "This really better be important," she thought.  "No tarot nonsense."


End file.
